predators.
'In ancient days,' the envoy was saying, 'the Four Mothers created the land known as the Hundred with its doubled prow thrust east and north into ocean and two great mountain ranges to the south and the west to protect the inhabitants from their enemies. The Mothers joined themselves with the land, and in that transformation seven gods emerged from the maelstrom to create order.'
Keshad shrugged. 'So the story goes, at any rate.'
'Ah. You're clearly born and bred in the Hundred.' The man touched his own left eye, as if to bring to Kesh's attention that he had noticed the debt scar on Kesh's face. 'Yet you don't believe the Tale of Beginning?'
'I believed it when I was a child.'
'You've gone over to the Silvers' way of believing?'
'The Silvers? No, I don't know anything about that.'
The envoy was old enough to be Kesh's father, had Kesh still had a father; a man beyond his prime but not yet elderly.
'Something else, then. Hmm. Keshad is your given name, so you say. That means you were dedicated to the Air Mother at birth. Too much thinking. That's often a problem with Air-touched children. In what year were you born?'
Kesh brushed his elbow, where his tattoo was. 'Year of the Goat.'
'Even worse then! Goats are inconstant and unstable, prone to change their thinking, especially if they're Air-touched and liable to think too much. Still, they can survive anything. Look at you, a young man, in the prime of your strength, good-looking, all your teeth-oh, no! missing one, probably from a fight.'
'That's right. But the other man lost more! And he started it!'
'Happy is Ilu when he hears of those who gain justice!' The envoy grinned, and Kesh laughed. 'Good eyes, not bloodshot or yellow or infected. Strong limbs, open stride. Health in order. It must be your Goat's heart that is distracting your Air-touched mind.'
Kesh rolled his eyes, but he did not want to insult a holy envoy, who was a nice enough fellow, cheerful, lean, strong, and with an amazing set of white teeth that made his grin contagious. Obviously, the man was crazy.
'So, then, lad, you are born to be skeptical. How do you think the world came into being, if you don't believe my tale?'
'I hadn't given it much thought. I'm too busy wondering if we'll be attacked on the road, and if the guards we hired will protect us. Or run.'
'That's always a distraction,' agreed the envoy amiably.
Still, as the small merchant train and its armed escort trudged down the hip-jarring slope of the Kandaran Pass, Keshad studied the terrain of the rugged foothills where bandits lurked. He cast his gaze up at the spires themselves, shining in the afternoon sun. Light splintered off the snowy peaks. Clouds spun off into threads where they caught on summits and pinnacles. It was easy to imagine the fiery eye of a god glaring those formidable mountains into being as a warning to mortal man: Do not cross me.
'The way I see it,' Keshad continued, 'it doesn't matter how the world came to be. It matters what path a man takes as he walks through the world.'
'A fine philosophy! Did you serve your apprenticeship to Ilu, perhaps? You sound like a Herald's clansman.'
'No.'
'One of the Thunderer's ordinands, perhaps? I see you carry a short sword and a bow. That's not common among merchants.'
'I am not,' he said curtly, and was then sorry at his sour tone. The envoy had treated him with good humor and deserved as much in return. 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about journeys, because of my own. For instance, a merchant has a choice of three paths to reach the markets of the Hundred.'
'Three paths? I would have thought only one.' The envoy indicated the road on which they walked, but his sharp gaze never left Kesh's face.
'He can brave the seas-'
'And their treacherous currents! The roil of Messalia! Reefs and shoals!'
'That's right. Or the desert crossing to the west over Heaven's Ridge.'
'And thereby across the Barrens! There's a reason they're called that, you know!'
'That's so. But it can be done, and folk do it.'
'True enough.' The man coughed. 'So I hear.'
'Or he can pass this way, as we're doing. Paying a tax to the empire for right-of-way on the Kandaran Pass, because it's the only route leading over the Spires that we know of.'
The envoy's steady gait did not falter, but his eyebrows rose in surprise and his voice changed timbre. 'That we know of? You think there's another way over the Spires?'
'If there was, and you knew about it, wouldn't you keep it hidden?'
The envoy snorted and lifted his walking staff, letting its crest of silk ribbons flutter as he waved the staff toward the heavens. 'That I would, lad! If I were a merchant, and prized profit above all things. Or one of the Lady's mendicants, desiring secrecy. How comes it that you know so much about traveling into and out of the Hundred, if you're not heart-sworn to Ilu the Herald, as I am?'
'I'm a merchant, and therefore I prize profit, so I've tried all three in my time-'
'Ah. As well you might, being an Air-touched Goat. Still, you're yet a sprout. Young to be so well traveled!'
'Not so very young!'
'Three and twenty seems young to a man of my years!'
Kesh laughed. 'Do you want to hear what I've concluded about the three paths?'
The envoy's expression was full with laughter, although he did not laugh, and for some reason Kesh could not explain, the holy man's amusement was not condescending but warm and sympathetic. 'I've heard a great deal about you so far! Why stop here? Go on!'
'Well, then. I've concluded that while Death might find tax collectors amusing, She doesn't often masquerade as one. Therefore: I choose taxes.'
'Taxes?'
'Best to risk taxes now, and death later.'
'As they say, both are certain. Still, I can't help but think they're gouging us.'
'Who is? Death's wolves?'
That grin flashed again. 'Death's wolves aren't greedy. They only eat when they're hungry, not like the wolves among men. I mean the Sirniakan toll collectors, the ones we've left behind. Double and triple toll they charged me! Even a man such as myself who is only carrying two bolts of silk. Just because I'm a foreigner in their lands.'
'It's true their tolls cut down on profits, but taxes are still preferable to death. A man can't work if he's dead.'
'So it's said. Is that all life is for you? Work?'
Kesh looked back at his cargo. He'd rented the wagon, mules, and driver at great expense in the south, and spent yet more to rig up scaffolding and waxed canvas so his treasure would be concealed from the eyes of men, although naturally every person in the wagon train believed they knew what he had purchased. If he listened closely, he heard the two chests shifting and knocking together and the two girls whispering as the wagon juddered along. Otherwise, his cargo was silent and seemingly ignored by merchants and guardsmen and travelers alike, but he saw the way they glanced at his campsite in the evenings, every man of them. Wondering.
The envoy said nothing, waiting him out.
Kesh discovered he'd tightened his hand on the hilt of his own staff so hard his fingers hurt. He shifted the staff to his other hand and opened and closed his fingers to ease the ache.
'Work is the road I must take to reach the destination I seek,' he said finally, knowing the ache would never ease.
'Ah.' Again, the envoy brushed a finger alongside his own unscarred left temple. If he wanted to question Kesh about the debt mark, he kept his curiosity politely to himself.
'What of you, holy envoy? That's a long way to walk just to buy silk, when you can buy Sirniakan silk in the
